


Fathogram

by moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Airmen, Dragons, M/M, Pining, Pre-Havemercy, Raphael is a poetic disaster, Secret Relationship, Shower Sex, awkward first date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:18:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst thing about it was that everyone knew, even though they never said a word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathogram

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to missbysshe for the far too indulgent beta :)

The worst thing about it was that everyone knew, even though they never said a word.

Somehow, it would've been easier to withstand the taunting and the insults and the crude jokes that usually spread like an ugly cough whenever anyone did anything even remotely cindy at the Airman. Ivory himself wasn't the type to join in this sort of banter, but he could've looked disgusted, sneered at him, maybe played with one of his knives to scare him off, and once the initial excitement had died down, Raphael could've moved on.

Maybe.

With the help of some of Magoughin's hot buttered rum, the soothing rhyme and meter of Natalia's voice telling him to get a fucking grip, and a very blond, very pale whore down at Our Lady, Raphael maybe could've gotten some closure and, if not stopped loving Ivory, then at least stopped pining for him with every broken syllable of his soul.

As it was, the only person who seemed oblivious to Raphael's feelings was the object of said feelings, while everyone else held their tongues, and Raphael continued to pine.

Perhaps even worse, however, was the fact that they were kind about it.

Airmen weren't generally trained to be kind, they were trained to pick out a weak spot from miles above in the clouds and hone in on it, and they were responsible for getting their comrades back on track if they ever slipped up. But instead of metaphorically grabbing Raphael by the scruff of his neck and tossing him back into the saddle, all Raphael got was Ghislain wordlessly plucking an upside-down book out of his hands and putting it back the right way around in passing, or Luvander making him a second cup of hot chocolate when he was fixing one for himself, or Balfour shooting him sad looks across the dinner table and lending him a book when Rook wasn't watching.

Flying with Natalia was a relief. She was the only one who didn't pretend it wasn't painfully obvious, and her smoky, teasing laughter at Raphael's clumsy infatuation made something unclench inside of him. If it weren't for Natalia, surely Raphael would've long since crash-landed somewhere embarrassingly close to Thremedon after once again staring for too long. She kept him grounded, focused; but at the same time, Raphael knew she wouldn't hesitate to claw Cassiopeia and Ivory out of the skies if they fell, battles and Ke'Han be damned. Her loyalties lay with Raphael first, Volstov second.

Sometimes he wondered if the dragons ever talked amongst themselves during downtime.

He'd heard the voices of most of the other dragons at some point, but Cassiopeia was a quiet one, as ruthless and dangerous in the air as she was withdrawn and wary on the ground, particular in her needs, and quick to lash out at anyone who didn't respect that. Ivory spent a lot of time with her, cleaning her up after a raid and soothing her ruffled nerves. Rook occasionally joked about Ivory having a lady friend because of this, but everyone knew he spent almost as much time down in Havemercy's pen, and it was hard to get a rise out of Ivory, so he usually grew bored of it after a few days. In any case, Cassiopeia and Ivory both seemed to shy away from people, but whenever Natalia and Raphael flew a little too close by accident, neither of them had any objections.

Raphael and Ivory often went out on raids together, because their dragons complimented each other well. Natalia and Cassiopeia understood each other blindly – or maybe it was their riders who did, though Raphael was loathe to let his thoughts drift off into such dangerous waters, and in any case, dragons and riders were always a team, and you couldn't credit just one without the other. What Raphael both enjoyed and dreaded the most about those nights, however, was coming home. Warmth flooded him at the first quiet flutter of dawn, the adrenaline-fuelled, easy camaraderie, the celebratory cups of tea in the kitchen, Ivory's lazy smiles that flicked and curled like a cat's tail, half-warning, half-content; but there was only so much euphoria that could course through your veins before you crashed, and then Raphael had to brave the showers with Ivory and whoever else had been out with them that night, most often Jeannot or Ghislain, depending on whether they needed Al Atan's speed or Compassus' bulk to back them up.

The thing was, it wasn't uncommon to be half-hard when you got back in from flying. There was friction and excitement and the dragons' dirty songs, and people like Rook or Niall even paraded around like that as if it were a badge of honour, a mark of distinction. Raphael's prime strategy for the shower was to turn the water as cold as he could stand and stare at the wall until Ivory had left, washing his hair twice or chatting with Ghislain, anything to stop himself from looking. Afterwards, he went back to bed like the others, but he was never able to sleep; instead he read, or stared at the ceiling, or sometimes snuck down to the pens to see Natalia. Once, he'd spotted Merritt curled up fast asleep under Vachir's wing. Another time, he'd nearly run smack into Magoughin who'd been on his way out, and they'd nodded to each other without ever mentioning it again. Natalia only rolled her eyes and called him sentimental when he showed up, but Raphael knew that he wasn't the only one who did.

Then, one night, after a short but gruelling raid in the pitch dark, Raphael slipped up.

He'd been out three times that week, hadn't yet managed to catch up on sleep, and his muscles were seizing up in protest under the cold water, so he turned it back to warm and hissed as the cramps slowly eased. Ghislain was in one of his less talkative moods, and left the showers before Raphael had even started washing his hair, but Raphael was too busy rubbing feeling back into his stiff hands to realise what that meant, namely that he was alone with Ivory while both of them were naked and covered in soap suds.

“Thank you for warning me about the catapult,” Ivory said then, and Raphael nearly slipped on the wet tiles in surprise. Ivory never talked in the shower. He didn't talk much outside of the shower either, and even then he rarely spoke up unprompted.

“Oh,” Raphael said, willing himself to keep staring at the wall. “That wasn't... I mean. I saw it, you didn't, anyone would've done the same.”

“No,” Ivory said, his voice clear and sharp like freshly polished dragon scales. “You left your position. You could've been hurt. If I'd got hit at this angle, it would've impaired me, but not done any serious damage; you didn't have to go out of your way to warn me like that.”

It sounded reproachful, even though he'd just thanked him, and Raphael couldn't resist sneaking a glance at him under the guise of reaching for his shampoo. Ivory was scrubbing soot from his knuckles, and his usually pale skin had pinked to an angry flush under his ministrations. He was long, skinny and graceful, the ends of his hair curled cheerfully under the water, and there was a somewhat sullen look on his face, his lips pursed ever so slightly in that familiar way of his which made Raphael's stomach do a thing that felt like Natalia spreading her wings.

“Well,” he said, wrenching his gaze back to the wall in front of him. “Maybe I didn't read the situation as well as you did, then. Better safe than sorry, anyway.”

“Right,” Ivory said, and turned his shower off abruptly. “Good night.”

He stalked out of the room, one last grey, sooty smear down his back still unnoticed, looking almost angry, and Raphael let out a long breath when the door had closed behind him and sagged against the tiles. He was hard, and where his fingers had been numb from the cold earlier, they were now throbbing with warmth and the desire to rub the soot off the small of Ivory's back, maybe trail a little lower, clean him up proper... He whined and turned around to face the wall again. There were no second raids tonight, Ghislain and Ivory were on their way to bed, and even an early-riser like Niall wouldn't show his face in the showers for another couple of hours yet, so Raphael might as well make use of the unexpected privacy and deal with this.

He spread his legs, braced himself against the wall and leaned his forehead against the tiles, jerking himself off roughly and prying some old, well-used memories from the depth of his mind. Before he'd joined the airmen, he'd been travelling a lot, and he'd made his fair share of experiences with girls and boys alike; these were what he focused on, because he _couldn't_ think about Ivory, not if he wanted to look him in the eye again tomorrow without dying a slow death inside.

The trouble with Ivory was that he was always quiet.

Raphael didn't hear his footsteps, nor did he hear the door opening, but he did hear his “Have you seen my” and the faltering intake of breath that followed, along with the click of the door as it swung shut on its own behind him.

Raphael froze under the spray of the shower. All he could do was open his eyes and turn his head, and watch, terrified, as Ivory's gaze dropped down to where his hand was still wrapped around his prick, only instead of laughing, or making a face, or scolding him for doing this in the showers instead of in the privacy of his own room, Ivory simply looked.

He was wearing a towel around his waist. His hair was still damp, clinging to the nape of his neck, almost translucent, and his mouth twisted closed when the rest of that sentence refused to come out, but his eyes remained where they were, pale grey with a chalk smear of curiosity in them.

“Sorry,” he finally said, not sounding sorry at all.

“'s alright,” Raphael said weakly. His knees were trembling, and Ivory's gaze sent a lick of heat down Raphael's spine to his tail bone, where it smouldered, hissing and spitting like wet dragon fire.

He couldn't help the whimper that escaped him. Ivory's eyes snapped back up to his face, and he turned his head to the side, contemplating.

“Sorry,” Raphael whispered.

“That's alright,” Ivory echoed, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into something of a half-smile. He stepped deeper into the room, slowly, as if he didn't want to scare Raphael, who had a small moment of hysteria at the predatory look in Ivory's eyes – his gaze was dark now, crouching like a panther about to pounce, and Raphael whimpered again, but still didn't move as Ivory carefully circled him until he stood right behind Raphael.

“What are you,” Raphael began, breathing hard and fast. Instead of replying, Ivory put one hand on Raphael's waist and reached the other around to curl around Raphael's own. Ivory's fingers were cold, and they didn't touch anything save for Raphael's hand, but it sent such a jolt of desire through him that he could hardly stand upright, and he let his forehead drop against the tiles again with a dull thud.

He cleared his throat.

“What are you doing,” he tried again, voice rough and dry like firewood waiting to catch a spark.

“Helping,” Ivory said, like a suggestion, and gently coaxed Raphael's hand back into its earlier rhythm.

“Oh,” Raphael said, and then not much else, at least nothing coherent enough to be called words, which was why Ivory had to move his free hand from his waist to his mouth at some point – not that this really helped, except for how it made Raphael come even faster, perhaps.

Ivory quickly washed both their hands under the shower while Raphael was still catching his breath, then stepped back, his towel damp but still in place, and left only the tiniest imprint of a smirk in the steamy air between them before whisking himself out of the bathroom.

Raphael was left staring at the spot he'd vacated, come dripping down his calf, desperately wondering what had just happened and why, and, if it had, what Ivory was doing in his room right now and whether that involved getting himself off the way he'd just done to Raphael.

*

Raphael spent the rest of the night lying in bed, naked and wide-eyed, uncomfortably aroused but unwilling to do anything about it, because wanking by himself would never be as good anymore without Ivory's hand to guide him. He missed breakfast the next day, and when he stumbled into the common room around noon, dishevelled and tired, Ivory was sitting at the piano, playing an uncharacteristically cheerful melody, and didn't even acknowledge him even when Compagnon and Jeannot started snickering over the state of his hair.

Raphael manfully resisted the urge to break out in messy tears right there on the rug and joined Ghislain for a game of cards, which he lost, spectacularly.

At dinner, he got a single smile from Ivory across the table, nothing more than a wisp of smoky amusement curling from his mouth before he turned his attention back on Ace, leaving Raphael to mop up the glass of water he'd knocked over with his elbow. Ghislain shot him a warning look, and Raphael decided to take a long walk by himself to clear his head and to not embarrass himself any further among his comrades tonight.

The next time Raphael was signed up for raid duty, he nearly wet his pants when the siren came, and for once was actually the first one saddled up and ready to go. They went with Ace that night and an extra back-up of Adamo, and by the time Raphael had finished thanking Natalia under his breath for saving his sorry distracted ass, got shouted at by Adamo, and scrunched up the courage to walk into the showers, Ivory was already towelling off and asking Ace if he fancied a game of darts before bed.

Crushed, sore, and rock-hard, Raphael scrubbed the soot off his body in record speed and retired to his room for a good, long, solitary wank.

And then it happened again.

They were out on a raid with Jeannot, who looked dead on his feet by the time they got back and cut his shower short. Ivory took his time, however, and Raphael was still hoping, so he washed himself with slow, jerky motions and got thoroughly absorbed in the task of finger-combing a few particularly stubborn knots out of his hair when he was done with that, until finally, he heard Ivory switch off his shower. As always, his footsteps were quiet, but this time Raphael was listening for them, and turned around just as Ivory had crossed the room.

He was going to be suave. He was going to raise an eyebrow Jeannot-style and trail his gaze down Ivory's body and say _need some help?_ in his sexiest voice, the one he usually reserved only for his favourite poets. Then he was going to drop on his knees and suck Ivory off, see if he couldn't make the ice queen façade melt a little, maybe even elicit a few sounds.

Only then he found himself pressed up against the wall so swiftly and suddenly that all of his carefully laid plans got scrambled in his head like eggs for breakfast, and Ivory's hand was on him, this time without the barrier of his own in-between, cold again but oh-so-wicked, while the other one was pinning Raphael's wrists to the tiles, and Raphael didn't last any longer than the last time at all.

When he opened his eyes, Ivory was watching his face with an unreadable expression. It sent a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with cold tiles or lukewarm water. Ivory turned to wash his hands under the shower, and Raphael wanted to reach out and reel him in, kiss his hands clean and his mouth, kiss him all over until he squirmed, but Ivory once again turned and walked away.

“Ivory,” Raphael called out, his voice wrecked and pleading.

Ivory stilled at the door.

“Maybe next time,” he said, and stepped outside.

*

_Maybe next time_ became Raphael's mantra over the next few weeks. They went out on a few more raids together, but only twice did Ivory linger in the showers afterwards, and despite the two glorious handjobs Raphael got, Ivory still wouldn't let him touch him in return, and each time he went back to his room still yearning for more.

It had been a while since the last time when things finally changed. Raphael was late to the showers after talking strategy with Adamo in the corridor, and he arrived to find them empty, disappointment prickling down his back like frostbite. He quickly undressed, cleaned himself up and towelled off, then padded down the hallway to his room with only his towel wrapped around his waist and his eyes trained on the floor, which was why he nearly yelped in surprise when a door opened to his left and Ivory stuck his head out.

“There you are,” he whispered, looking him up and down. “You were late.”

“Um. Yes,” Raphael muttered and licked his lips.

“Well, come in,” Ivory said. He stepped aside, waiting for Raphael to follow, wearing a pair of low-slung linen trousers and a soft white shirt. Raphael swallowed. He'd never been inside Ivory's room. So far, they'd only done this in the showers, and there was something intimate and promising about being invited into his living quarters, which were usually off-limits to anyone but the person who inhabited them.

“Okay,” Raphael said, and came in. Ivory closed the door silently behind him.

The room looked much the same as Raphael's in layout and furniture. There was a large bed pushed against one wall, a few bookshelves, though far less overcrowded than Raphael's and mostly filled with sheet music, a few lamps, an intricately woven rug, a desk, a wardrobe. It was very tidy. No clothes or books lying around, no used mugs or scattered notes, not even the knives Raphael had half-expected. The only visibly personal effects were some incense, a small iron teapot and a bundle of letters on the desk.

Ivory sat on the bed, looking like he'd run out of whatever steam had pushed him to open the door and invite Raphael in.

Somehow, this gave Raphael the strength to sit next to him, cradle his face in his palm and lean forward to kiss him for the first time, just a soft brush of lips in the beginning, until Ivory kissed back, pushing against him, and softly bit his lower lip. Raphael hummed in appreciation.

“Maybe this time?” he whispered hopefully, and Ivory tugged lightly at one of his curls.

“Yes, this time,” he agreed. Raphael groaned and kissed him again, his hands already at the hem of Ivory's shirt, pulling it up and off, then hesitating before placing it on top of a chair rather than on the floor.

“Can I suck you off,” Raphael asked breathlessly, hooking one finger into the space where Ivory's trousers stretched away from his skin between hipbone and stomach. It felt surprisingly warm.

“Okay,” Ivory said.

So Raphael went down on him between two circles of lamplight on the bed, fistfuls of shadows splashing against the wall with every movement, and he was damp and shivering against the open space of Ivory's legs, but Ivory's taste was clean and heady on his tongue, like night air and smoke from a distant bonfire, and then Ivory pushed one hand into Raphael's hair and  _pulled_ , and Raphael could feel the muscles of Ivory's thighs start to tremble even though he still wasn't making a sound, and didn't stop until Ivory pushed him off.

And then Ivory said “you can fuck me now” like he was asking for the jam at breakfast, and Raphael couldn't  _breathe_ .

He wanted to ask so many things, _are you sure_ and _have you done this before_ and _can I really_ crowding up in the back of his throat and coming out in a single colour smear of sound, just a questioning whine, loud enough to make Ivory's hand twitch nervously on the sheets.

“Have you got any lube?” Raphael made himself say instead, because it was safer than any of the other things he wanted to know, and Ivory hesitated before getting up to fetch something from his desk drawer.

“Make it fast,” Ivory said, holding out a small jar of lubricant and a condom wrapped in shiny foil. Raphael took both and sat back on his haunches as Ivory climbed onto the bed again, his movements like the flicker of low-burning flames.

“You like it that way?” Raphael asked around a shaky grin. He unscrewed the jar, but looked up when Ivory didn't answer. “Hm?”

Ivory had folded himself against the pillows like before, one leg propped up and his arms wrapped loosely around his middle. His veins shone blue through his white skin like wire, and there was a little half-moon sliver of a frown between his brows that Raphael wanted to smooth out with his thumb.

“Not particularly,” he finally admitted, quiet like the space between two breaths.

Raphael let himself tumble onto his knees and lowered the jar.

“Well, how _do_ you like it?” he asked, curious, because Ivory never did anything he didn't want to do unless it was the smaller of two evils, like when he'd come out with them to celebrate Ghislain's birthday last year just so Luvander would stop nagging him about it.

“Does it matter?” Ivory said. “I thought you wanted this.”

Something cold trickled down Raphael's insides like snowmelt. He  _had_ wanted this, but not the way Ivory was suggesting – not a pity fuck, not as something Raphael needed to get out of his system, not like a visit to Our Lady, perfunctory and routine, like a bloody  _favour_ . If that was what Ivory was offering, then Raphael would rather go back to pining in peace, thank you very much; he had his dignity, even if the state of his hair and the way he tripped over his feet when Ivory entered a room didn't exactly suggest that most of the time.

“It matters to me,” Raphael muttered sullenly, looking around for his towel. Walking back to his own room now would be enough of an embarrassment, he didn't need to be naked on top of it. He'd just reached out for it when Ivory's cool hand closed gently around his wrist.

“Okay,” Ivory said, simple and clean, a blade of a word slicing through Raphael's resolve. “Not fast, then.”

Raphael stared at Ivory's fingers on his wrist and swallowed, but didn't make a move for the towel anymore.

“That supposed to mean slow?” he finally asked, because he needed a starting point, something to work with. A reassurance, of sorts, that this wasn't just going to be for his supposed benefit. Ivory scowled again and looked away, his clear eyes shot through with uncertainty for a moment, like sunlight dancing on water.

“Yes. Slow,” he muttered at last, absently flexing his fingers. “But if you tell anyone, I'll cut your balls off.”

Raphael was quite confident in his skills in bed, but refrained from saying  _you might not want to, when I'm through with you_ , because he wasn't suicidal, for one thing, and for another, Ivory looked...

Shy.

It wasn't something he'd ever associated with Ivory, who seemed to have an innate self-confidence the way a bird was confident in its wings or a horse in the strength of its legs. Ivory was graceful, competent, unafraid; he rode his dragon through thunderstorms with steely determination, played the same piece twenty times over on his piano until it was perfect, could impale a cockroach on his knife from all the way across the common room and ignore you so thoroughly that you started to doubt your own existence. In the showers, Ivory had ostensibly done something for Raphael every single time without reciprocation, but it had really always been Ivory in control, dictating the terms, taking what he wanted and leaving once that business was concluded to his satisfaction.

Now, Ivory was avoiding Raphael's eyes, and his mouth was coiled tight like a spring. Raphael swallowed again.

“Okay,” he said, and picked up the pot of lube. “Lie back. Let me know if something's not to your taste, though, yeah? I ain't keen on having my balls cut off for nothing.”

Ivory made a tiny snort of what was possibly amusement. The scowl was gone from his face, layered over with the fresh snow of detachedness that usually obscured his face. Raphael warmed the lube in his hands while Ivory shifted minutely on the mattress, about to turn on his stomach, but Raphael stopped him. It seemed odd that Ivory, so guarded and wary, would trust Raphael enough to turn his back on him in bed, but Raphael had learned a few new things about Ivory in the past hour, and one of them was that he had trouble holding someone's gaze when he was feeling uncomfortable.

“No, I want to look at you,” Raphael said, suddenly emboldened. Irritation danced at the edges of Ivory's face, like a flash of peacock feathers in the night. He sank back, bracing himself on his elbows and letting his gaze drip sideways over his shoulder with pursed lips. Raphael's stomach tightened at the sight, because he was beautiful in the faded lace-trim of candle-light that sketched the elongated shadows of his lashes onto his pale cheeks in delicate pencil strokes.

Humming, Raphael leaned down to take him in his mouth again, because he was only half-hard anymore and that wasn't a good starting point for anything else. To his relief, it didn't take long to get him back to his earlier state, and Raphael let his slick fingers slip down between Ivory's thighs to rub and caress at his entrance. He managed to coax a shiver out of the other man when he pressed one inside, but the first sound, a tiny gasp, demanded a whole lot of skill and tricky fingerwork in advance payment that Raphael would've happily spent the rest of his life providing, if that was the reward. Slowly, Ivory's legs widened and his hands knotted themselves into the sheets, and then Raphael brushed that spot inside him  _just so_ , and Ivory choked on an involuntary whimper that burned a blazing path down the night sky of Raphael's back like a comet.

Raphael made a wish, and decided he was ready.

He rolled the condom over himself and fisted himself roughly a few times with a slick palmful of lube, feeling Ivory's eyes on him like fingertips dancing down his spine. He was hot and flushed, and when he slowly pushed into Ivory, carefully watching his face for signs of discomfort, Ivory arched up cool and shivering against him and Raphael moaned helplessly, because  _fuck_ , they felt good together.

He fucked Ivory slowly, as requested, trying out shallow, circling thrusts versus deep and straight ones, pitting the minuscule reactions against each other that he was just now learning to decrypt: a sudden tilt in Ivory's breathing pattern, like a magnetic field swooping over compass needles; a tremor in his muscles, a lessening of tension; the unconscious, fluttering movements of his fingers and the time he bit Raphael's lip on the apex of an agonisingly long thrust. Raphael was so awed at the way Ivory didn't come apart so much as come to life under him that he barely registered the roiling chaos of his own arousal until Ivory clenched around him and came with a sharp whisper of surprise and Raphael had no choice but to follow over the edge.

He might've sighed out Ivory's name when he did, but that was neither here nor there.

Once he'd regained his bearings enough, Raphael gently pulled out and tossed the condom on the floor, then used his discarded towel to clean them both up, first Ivory, then himself. Ivory was trembling, whether from the cold or from the force of his orgasm Raphael couldn't tell, and he wanted to scoop him up in a hug and fall asleep right there in Ivory's bed, but even his sleepy post-raid brain was echoing with alarm bells at the thought of having to get back to his room in nothing but a damp, come-stained towel the next morning while Niall was on the prowl for coffee and gossip.

“Okay?” he asked quietly, sitting on the edge of the mattress, breathless and bone-tired, though buzzing with a shaky contentment. Ivory nodded, gaze flung against the far wall once again. He looked wrecked, at least compared to his usual standards; there were spots of colour high in his cheeks, his hair was rumpled, and his lower lip was angry red and chafing where he'd been digging his teeth into it. It sent little thrills dancing in Raphael's stomach like drops of water on a hot stove top.

“You should go,” Ivory said, still not looking at him. On a whim, Raphael leaned forward, took Ivory's chin between two fingers and tugged it around to kiss him gently on the lips.

“Good night, Ivory,” he muttered, and stood up.

It might have been a trick of his imagination, but Raphael was pretty sure he heard Ivory say “Good night, Raphael” before he closed the door behind him.

*

Raphael slept soundly that night, despite expectations to the contrary. In fact, he slept so soundly that it was way past noon when he was finally woken up by Ace trampling past his door and hollering something about stolen biscuits. He'd missed both breakfast and lunch, and there was nothing salvageable left in the kitchen except for coffee grounds and milk, so Raphael decided on a whim to walk past Ivory's room and ask if he wanted to join him for a walk and some late lunch in town.

Silence greeted his tentative knock, and Raphael was about to turn back around, his stomach clenching around the twin loops of hunger and disappointment, when the door suddenly clicked open and Ivory blinked out at him, looking wary.

“I'm going into town,” Raphael blurted out. Ivory's gaze dropped down to where he was knotting his fingers together nervously, and Raphael wanted to hunch into his leather jacket and disappear. “Do you want to come?”

Ivory was still staring at Raphael's hands. Slowly, Raphael noticed that he was wearing the same trousers and shirt as the night before, now rumpled, and that his hair was sticking up in odd shapes and his left cheek was pillow creased. The room behind him seemed dark.

“Did... I wake you up?” Raphael asked, unable to control himself.

“No,” Ivory said, voice like crushed velvet and down. Somewhat sullenly, he rubbed his knuckles over his left cheek and looked away.

“Sorry,” Raphael said, just in case. “Did you miss lunch, too? I was going to get something to eat... There's this place down 'Versity Stretch that does really amazing soup.”

“I'm not hungry,” Ivory said, but his stomach chose that moment to make a growly, mewling noise, and Ivory angrily twisted one hand into the front of his shirt as if to stifle the sound.

“Are you sure?” Raphael asked, grinning. He bounced on his heels, feeling feather-light and bubbly like Arlemagne champagne.

“Maybe a little,” Ivory conceded with a sigh.

“Great,” Raphael said quickly, “I'll meet you outside in ten minutes.”

He took off before Ivory could say anything else, whistling as he waited outside the gates of the Airman with his hands in his pockets and his head full of music and poetry, arching happily against the dewy fingerprints of fresh, grassy spring sunshine on his skin. Ten minutes turned into twenty, and Raphael was kicking his boots against the fence in time with the second hand of his pocket watch, craving tea and the clean, spring rain scent of Ivory's skin. His stomach crawled with hunger like a many-legged creature on the prowl. Idly wondering whether Ivory would chop his fingers off if he tried to hold his hand under the table later turned into the dismal suspicion that maybe Ivory wasn't going to show up at all, pricking at him like a pesky splinter of wood stuck under his skin, but then the gate creaked open at last, and Raphael sagged against the fence in relief.

“There you are,” he said.

“Here I am,” Ivory echoed, dressed in brown slacks and a light green jacket, hair damp at the tips and tidy again. He started walking down the path at a brisk pace, and Raphael hurried to follow, tripping on his bootlaces and trying not to stare too much.

They were silent on the way into town, mainly because Ivory never said much in the first place and Raphael was too busy mentally plucking apart every sentence and word for the perfect thing to say. When they turned into 'Versity Stretch, Ivory had to stop and wait several times as Raphael got sidetracked by the various book shops, but he didn't seem annoyed or impatient, just vaguely bewildered, if anything. Finally, Raphael led them down a side alley and into a small, cramped café tucked in haphazardly between two blind shop fronts. The bell above the door trilled merrily, and a large brown hand waved at him from behind the counter, because Raphael was a regular here. He'd discovered the café on one of his long, winding walks through Thremedon, and it had instantly appealed to him, with its towering bookshelves along the walls, the creaking dark oak furniture, the haphazard zigzag of lamplight on the tables, and its lingering smell of parchment and spices. Now, as he stepped over to a table by the window, Raphael suddenly saw its flaws – the dust on the shelves, the scuffed, mismatched chairs, the grime on the lanterns – and cast an anxious glance at Ivory, allowing himself to breathe again when Ivory seemed unperturbed by any of it.

“I recommend the onion soup,” Raphael said. Half an hour of agonising over what to say, and the first thing he came out with was _I recommend the onion soup_. Just great. Raphael sunk down in his seat and played with a spoon, grateful when the waiter came over to pour them tea and take their orders. They both went with the onion soup, which made Raphael feel a little better about himself along with the first fortifying sip of strong, buttered black tea, and he sat up again and chatted a little about some of the books on the shelves that he'd read on his last visits while Ivory warmed his hands on his mug and listened.

Their soup arrived, topped with slices of crusty bread and molten cheese, and Ivory made a small, pleased sound when he put the first spoonful in his mouth. Warmth flared at the bottom of Raphael's stomach even before he'd swallowed his own mouthful.

“Good?” he asked, a wide, beaming smile fogging up his face like steam from a teapot.

“Yes,” Ivory said. “Quite.”

“I've tried making it at home, but it never turns out right,” Raphael sighed. “Been meaning to ask them for the recipe for ages, but I always forget. Remind me before we leave?”

Ivory huffed out a little laugh, stoking the fires licking along Raphael's insides.

“Okay,” he said, and: “I didn't know you could cook.”

Raphael felt his cheeks heat up in the mulled warmth of the café and the simmering cadences of Ivory's low, mischievous voice.

“I'll make you bouillabaisse next time,” he promised, matching the tone of his voice to Ivory's. “It'll spoil you for anyone else's. I picked it up when I was travelling in Arlemagne.”

“Bouillabaisse,” Ivory echoed, pursing his lips around the foreign syllables. “What's that?”

“Fish stew,” Raphael explained. “Very tasty fish stew. You'll see. A girl once proposed to me after I made it for her. She was inconsolable when I turned her down.”

One of Ivory's eyebrows twitched in amused disbelief.

“Is that so?”

“You'll see,” Raphael said again, smugly, and Ivory smirked.

“We'll see,” he corrected, picking up his spoon.

They finished their soup in companionable silence after that, and when Raphael ordered two slices of lemon meringue pie and some more tea for dessert, Ivory didn't object, all earlier reluctance to admit that he was hungry forgotten. He ate his pie in small, dainty slices, letting them melt on his tongue and sucking meringue icing off his bottom lip with one of those minuscule frowns on his face that Raphael was becoming so accustomed to, and they talked about the latest sweepstake going on between Niall and Luvander for a while, musing on who was the most likely to win. It took Raphael even longer than Ivory to eat his pie, because he kept getting distracted watching Ivory lick his spoon clean or trail his fingertip along the rim of his cup, so when Ivory blinked a little forlornly at his empty plate, Raphael swiftly exchanged it for his own half-finished slice.

Ivory's eyes widened.

“What – that's – _why_ ,” he stammered, spoon still clutched possessively in his fist, and Raphael hid a grin behind his hand and poured himself more tea.

“Go on,” he said cheerfully, “you were appreciating it so beautifully. I'd rather watch you eat it than eat it myself.”

Ivory flushed a dull pink at that and ducked his head, but scooped up a piece with his spoon anyway, looking torn between resentfulness and contentment as he chewed. Now that he'd eaten, Raphael felt warm, happy, and pleasantly drowsy, and he wriggled around in his seat to get more comfortable and leaned forward with his arms crossed loosely on the table.

“I still can't believe you let me do that thing yesterday,” he murmured conspiratorially, but knew it was the wrong thing to say when the lines of Ivory's body hardened like frost over night. He opened his mouth to fix it somehow, though only managed to make it worse with a quivery “I mean, I really, that was, you liked it too, didn't you? You liked it.”

Ivory placed his spoon neatly back on the table and put his hands in his lap. His eyes were overcast with fury when he looked up, but everything else about him was deathly still and calm.

“Why are you talking about this,” he said, his voice serrated like a knife. “Who said we could talk about this?”

Raphael shrank back in his chair.

“Sorry,” he whispered miserably, clutching his mug in front of him like a meagre shield. “We'll talk about something else.”

They didn't, though. Ivory didn't finish the pie, and Raphael paid for the food with unsteady hands and drank the last of the tea and jiggled his leg until there was nothing left to do but to get up and walk back to the Airman. Not even the book shops held anything of interest anymore for him now, all he saw was the mocking finery of happy ending after happy ending trussed up in the window displays, swooning women and sword-wielding men and everything that he wasn't spelled out for all the world to see. Ivory was back to his brisk pace, and Raphael let him walk ahead, dragging his feet. It'd been going so well, too.

When he arrived back at the Airman, Ivory had already gone inside and was nowhere to be seen. Raphael sustained a brief hope that he might be in the common room playing piano, but there were only Ghislain, Magoughin, Jeannot and Compagnon playing cards around the large round table in the corner, and Raphael wilted onto the sofa still wearing his boots and jacket and watched resignedly as Jeannot proceeded to clean them all out with a bored smirk playing around his lips.

“Sneaky bastard,” Ghislain grumbled, slapping down his cards and handing over the last of his money to Jeannot. Compagnon, who'd wisely surrendered the round before, patted him on the back and giggled, then turned to watch the ongoing silent duel between Jeannot and Magoughin as Ghislain got up to stretch his legs.

“What're you marring the landscape for, then,” he said, ambling over to where Raphael was still drooping sadly over the sofa. “Did they throw you out of the whorehouse, or are you moping about poetry again?”

“No,” Raphael sighed, rolling onto his back. “I might've, er, pissed Ivory off a little bit earlier, though, so maybe you should all lay off him tonight if you don't want to end up with a knife in your back.”

Ghislain swore under his breath and cracked his knuckles.

“What'd you do, insult his girl?”

“Fae, are you serious, man?” Magoughin called over, about to lose another game to Jeannot's smugly raised eyebrow. “Ivory's going to skin you alive.”

“I knooow,” Raphael wailed, clutching a cushion over his face. “I'm pretty sure he would've done exactly that if we hadn't been in that café, surrounded by witnesses.”

“What the fuck were you doing in a fucking café with fucking Ivory, Raph?” Ghislain growled and nudged the cushion away from Raphael with his foot. Raphael whimpered.

“Shit. Nothing. Having lunch.”

“Having – fuck me, I didn't know Ivory even went out for that sort of stuff. Did you kidnap him, Raphael? That why he's mad at you?”

“Just because _you_ never come to town with me doesn't mean I have to _kidnap people_ ,” Raphael sniffed. “Bastion.”

“Right. All you ever talk about is your cindy poetry, and you prance into every single fucking book shop on 'Versity Stretch and chat up the gooey-eyed shop girls with obscure questions about fancy fucking first editions,” Ghislain pointed out. “And then you ain't even got the decency to cop a feel, even though that's all they tolerate you for.”

“It's called _conversation_ ,” Raphael groused, “and if you actually listened for once, you'd know that I'm quite good at it, thank you.”

“That all you're good at, fairy boy?” Jeannot sneered from the card table, collecting his winnings. “ _Conversation_?”

Unfortunately for Raphael, this was the moment Ivory chose to enter the common room.

Upon hearing Jeannot's words and seeing Raphael stretched out on the sofa, Ivory stopped dead in his tracks, turned on his heel, and walked back out.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Raphael hissed, running a hand through his hair and only just noticing that it was in complete disarray on top of everything else.

Jeannot smirked serenely after him as he left the room, determined to find Ivory and at least explain that he hadn't been talking about him and what they'd done last night and that Jeannot was just taking the piss, as usual.

*

For the next three days, however, Ivory remained elusive.

Raphael made a habit of walking past his room and knocking, then pacing in front of his door for as long as he could get away with before anyone caught him, but Ivory was either never in or never felt like letting him in. Heartsick and desperate, Raphael made regular circuits of all the places Ivory might be – the kitchen, the common room, the corridors, Adamo's office, Cassiopeia's bay. He only circled the latter from a safe distance, because Cassiopeia liked to bare her fangs at him, dark smoke curling from her lips in warning, but Natalia said Ivory hadn't been to see Cassiopeia since the last raid anyway. Ivory was signed up for a shift with Rook and Luvander the next night, and Raphael went so far as to trade places with Luvander, who demanded brioches for breakfast in return, but there was no alarm that night, and so Raphael lay awake with eyes wide open until the first gauzy layer of dawn wrapped him in soothing grey light and he finally dozed off.

In the end, he decided to write a letter.

He re-wrote it a total of sixteen times, and only used the last version because his hand was cramping up and he was running out of ink. There was no need to sign his name underneath, but he did it anyway, so Ivory would have something to use against him if he wanted, to make him feel less vulnerable and more in control. Unless you were a whore, it was a dangerous thing to sleep with an airman, and since everyone already had their suspicions about Raphael, it was Ivory who'd be bearing the brunt of the backlash if it ever came out that that was what they were doing – had done, anyway – and Raphael wanted to spare him that, at the very least, even if that meant shouldering most of the blame and laying his heart bare.

Feeling tired and morose, Raphael folded up the letter and stuck it in an envelope with trembling hands. He wrote Ivory's name on the front in green ink, because green ink was for lovers, and even used his personal bastion-damned wax and seal, which made him miss home with a fierce stab of longing. He hadn't seen his brother and sister in almost a year.

After he'd gone and slid the letter under Ivory's door, Raphael returned to his room to write another one to his mother, then walked into town to send it off and to stock up on ink and parchment. He browsed his favourite book shops and even permitted himself to visit the fancy one on the Rue, although he couldn't afford any of the exquisite, silk-bound volumes they sold, because most of his pay went back to his family so his brother could pursue his studies. While he was inside, it started raining in thick, slimy tendrils, so Raphael sought refuge in one of the cafés near the Rue for a while before heading back in time for dinner at the Airman.

Ivory wasn't at dinner again, which didn't surprise Raphael, but nevertheless added to the empty snakeskin coils of quiet misery in the pit of his stomach. He distracted himself by playing chess with Evariste for an hour, who beat him easily, but the lonely presence of the piano at his back soon became too much, and he retired to his room with his new poetry anthology, nursing a cup of spiced and boozy warm milk for comfort.

It was past midnight when Raphael was roused from the stiff taffeta folds of half-sleep by a knock on his door.

He jerked awake, nearly knocking both his book and the empty mug to the floor, and balanced them on the already towering stack of books on his night table before heaving himself out of bed and shuffling over to the door to crack it open, expecting anything from a request to go out drinking with Ghislain and Mags to a blue face courtesy of a tipsy Luvander, anything – except Ivory.

“Oh,” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes and trying to smooth out the wrinkles in his clothes. His hair was probably a lost cause either way.

Ivory was holding Raphael's letter with both hands. It had been carefully sliced open with a knife, not a single ragged edge in sight, the wax seal still unbroken. Somehow, this comforted Raphael.

“Well, come in,” he sighed, stepping aside. Ivory hesitated, glancing up and down the corridor, before he followed the invitation, and Raphael quietly closed the door behind them and went to sit on his bed. Ivory walked up to him in three purposeful strides, then faltered and held out the letter.

“I can't read,” he said, an unhappy twist to his lips.

Raphael blinked.

“Oh,” he said again, a sudden rush of molten heat thrumming through his veins. He knew, of course, that some of the other boys couldn't read or write very well; Merritt and Ace for example both had the most atrocious spelling Raphael had ever encountered. Somehow, though, he'd never have thought to count Ivory among them; he had such sophisticated articulation when he spoke, and his fingers were so graceful and sure of themselves on the piano, it hadn't been hard to imagine them wrapped around a quill or pen.

“Sorry,” Ivory said quietly after Raphael had been silent for a long while.

“No, no, don't be that. It's my fault, I should've considered that. I, um. It's not important, anyway. I just wanted to apologise for what happened at the café.”

“Okay,” Ivory said, and then, almost inaudibly: “Can I still have it back?”

Dumbstruck, Raphael handed over the letter again, and Ivory smoothed it out neatly even though it wasn't creased and tucked it safely into his pocket.

“Cassie told me you were looking for me,” Ivory said casually, as if he hadn't been avoiding Raphael but had instead just happened to never be in any of the places Raphael had so frantically searched for him.

“Yes,” Raphael breathed. “I was.”

“Well, I'm here now,” Ivory said slowly. “So if there was anything else you wanted...”

Raphael wasn't surprised at the gut-punch of desire at the implications of those words, but he was at the fuzzy, peach-skin feeling of tenderness that peeled away from his insides and clogged up the back of his throat. He thought of  _maybe next time_ and  _you can fuck me now_ and the way Ivory sometimes looked as if a simple statement was dragged out from the depths of his soul by harpoons, and knew without a doubt that it had cost Ivory something to say those words, to come here and offer himself up once again even by the vaguest of definitions.

Swallowing hard, Raphael looked at the outline of his letter in Ivory's pocket. He hadn't just apologised in that letter like he'd told Ivory earlier, he'd poured out his heart in green ink splotches and wobbly letters and runny wax. What he wanted was Ivory himself, all of him, with his flaws and his moods and his scars, his gasps and whimpers, his quiet snorts of amusement, down to the very soot between his toes after a raid. He wanted to fall asleep curled around him and wake up early to make him breakfast, he wanted to look out for him when they were in the air, he wanted to read while Ivory played the piano and save the last piece of pie for him and cook him the most delicious bouillabaisse and fuck him, slowly, thoroughly, gently, lovingly, quietly and loudly, and come for him when that was all he wanted from Raphael that day.

“I want you,” Raphael whispered hoarsely. His voice sounded broken and sad. “I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” Ivory said, and stayed.

*

They established a routine.

Raphael would come to Ivory's room after a raid, and they'd fuck; sometimes with Raphael on top, sometimes not; sometimes this was just a handjob from Ivory and sometimes, very rarely, they didn't fuck at all, but stayed up together, Raphael reading quietly to Ivory, or talking about nothing in particular while the last soapy hours of the night washed them clean of the previous day. Any other nights, it was Ivory who came to Raphael, always with specific requests, ranging from “can you read this book to me” to “I'd like to fuck you on your hands and knees”, always whispered, never failing to send a shiver down Raphael's spine and a groan boiling up his throat.

During the day, they either stayed in Ivory's room, sleeping off the raids, or went their separate ways, though rarely straying far away from each other. Raphael still read or played cards with the others in the common room while Ivory played the piano, and then and again, Ivory could be convinced to accompany them to a bar when they weren't signed up for a shift, and he'd sit next to Raphael and sometimes lace their fingers together under the table and squeeze, just for a moment. They didn't talk about that, but Raphael always squeezed back.

Once a week, they went out for lunch to the café.

Raphael had been in love with Ivory for a long time, and he'd thought himself at the limits of his emotional capabilities back when he'd been pining and aching and gagging for every last scrap of attention from Ivory, but while he'd been busy staring at the horizon of unrequited affection, he'd been ignorant of the abundant deep sea life of loving someone who actively consented to being loved. He committed himself to getting to know Ivory, who was still calm and quiet and composed when he was with Raphael, but who was also many, many other things besides that didn't quite reach the surface of idle observation. Raphael learned that Ivory had two older brothers who sent him the most beautiful letters made up of sketches, scribbled music notes and dried plants, which Ivory kept meticulously in his desk, sorted by date. He learned that Ivory was scared of thunderstorms and fireworks and, sometimes, large crowds of people, but not much else. He spent a particularly enjoyable couple of weeks learning exactly what Ivory liked in bed and how to tell, and then never stopped learning that, because it changed with his moods and shifted the more comfortable they became around each other. And one day, when Raphael had just become acquainted with the topmost layer of his inner deep sea and was beginning to feel like he'd arrived, Ivory surprised him by writing him a letter.

They hadn't spent much time together during the days lately, and Ivory had seemed tired and exhausted at night. Raphael knew now that he must've spent most of his downtime practising, though he could only guess as to how he'd managed to teach himself how to write, or perhaps he had asked someone to teach him, or had known the basics already but had had trouble applying them in practice instead. The letter was only a very short one – four words long, in fact, written in shaky, newborn letters, and signed not with a name but a handful of notes – and Raphael spent a long time staring down at it, laughing when a tear splashed onto the page and smudged the last word, because he was a mess for this man and it was beautiful and terrifying and unfathomable that you could love someone so deeply and still be loved back.

He whispered it to Ivory now, every time they went out on a raid, just in case. Ivory never said it back, but Raphael carried his letter with him everywhere he went, words more precious than poetry, and when the other airmen cast them pointed looks or sneered or rolled their eyes, Raphael didn't care, because actually, they didn't know anything at all.  _Tip of the iceberg_ didn't even begin to cover it. And that was the best fucking thing about it, and no one could take that away from Raphael, not with words and not with anything else. 

It was just him, and Ivory, off soundings and off the map.


End file.
